Starting to get back to normal life ...

I got home on Tuesday night, after a delightful nine-hour flight, made much more pleasant by the eight-ish year old girl who made it her mission to kick my chair every 5 seconds for the entire flight. I had a bad feeling about her when, as I sat down, I heard her voice pipe up from the row behind me "D-a-a-a-a-ad! Shit, dad! Dad! I dropped me sweets on the floor! Dad! Shit!"

It felt very good to be greeted at the airport by my own, delightful, non-foul-mouthed children. I missed them so much ... and missed Bobby even more.

My mom is doing much better now than she was three weeks ago. When I got there, she was feeling very low, both physically and emotionally. By the time I left, she had got over the worst of the pain from the mastectomy, and was feeling more empowered in terms of dealing with the cancer. She is following a super-healthy organic diet so that she'll be in the best possible shape when it comes to dealing with chemo, and we spent a lot of time researching complementary treatment, so she is also taking various herbs and supplements. We are all quite frustrated that the wheels within the healthcare systems turned much more slowly than we'd been told they would, so, as it transpires, my mom only starts the chemo in another two weeks. So in some ways it may have been better if I'd waited a bit before going over ... but on the other hand, having me there straight away was good for my parents in other ways. It was good in practical terms, in that I could do all the cooking and cleaning etc while my mom was still recovering from the mastectomy. And it was also good in that it was a nice distraction from the worry and the waiting to hear back from the doctors. We did lots of touristy things while I was there, which we all enjoyed.

The children coped very well - the sitter turned out to be a great (albeit expensive) success. Bobby did a great job of holding it all together, and, I'm glad to say, missed me terribly.

Things I enjoyed during my trip (aside from spending all that time with my folks) were exploring Bath, long walks along the canal (my parents' flat in Bradford-on-Avon overlooks the canal), re-reading Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, and visiting the places mentioned in the books, spending a couple of days in London with my cousin and her boyfriend, and catching up with an old school friend.

The most distressing part of the trip was visiting another of our friends, who now lives in Exeter. She has ovarian cancer ... the first week I arrived in the UK, we spoke several times on the phone, and she sounded pretty good. She even mailed my mom a useful book on dealing with cancer ... she sounded really upbeat and positive. Then, the day after we spoke for the last time, she had a stroke. This is a rare side-effect of the chemo, apparently ... and by the time I got to see her, she was pretty much unconscious, not really able to speak. She would hate that ... she was always so articulate. The doctors said they couldn't do anything further. It's possible that she may recover from the stroke, but not likely. God life is unfair sometimes. She is only 36, and she has two young boys.